Joshua McCune's Blog

The 5 winners of my rafflecopter are: April Sabrina JoyKester NucumJacklin Updegraft Emily Krouk I've emailed you for mailing addresses. Congrats! And thanks to everybody for participating!

Welcome to 2016 Spring YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online until April 3, High Noon (PST)! There are NINE contests going on simultaneously for nine grand prizes, one for each team. You can enter one or all! I am a

The 5 winners of my rafflecopter are:   Lisa Mandina Jenna Kilgore Pamela Penza Kayla Tirrell Mollye Oze   I'll be emailing you for mailing addresses shortly. Congrats! And thanks to everybody for participating!

  Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes!   But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!   There are EIGHT contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the RED TEAM. There is also a blue team, a purple team,

  Stay tuned to have some fun, learn cool things about cool authors, and win some awesome books! For more info, check out http://www.yash.rocks/   I am part of the:    

Bookwormaniac (the fantabulous Justine Dy) recently interviewed me about TALKER 25. Check it out to find out why a book about moles is my favorite book of all time, plus, you know, other writerly things =)       

If you love their book(s), let them know how you feel! IRL, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Email.... even an old-fashioned letter. There is no greater currency than a genuine compliment.Sure, buying an author's book(s) is a wonderful way to support our shallow pockets, but that's not the reason the majority of us became writers. We want to inspire, entertain, relate... we want to know that readers enjoyed and/or were touched by our stories. Just the other day, a wonderful reader contacted me via Instagram. His enthusaism for books (particularly books with dragons) was epic. And infectious. He hadn't even read TALKER yet, but knowing that he was going to read it, knowing how excited he was to read it, it got me excited... and if you know me, exciteable is not one of the first descriptors you'd use.So let an author know how much you loved their work. You wanna go a step further... spread the word! Tell your friends, fellow students, co-workers... talk about it on your blog if you have one, write a review for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, etc... (shameless self-promotion alert! - links are to my books).Hemingway once said: 'There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.' Knowing that readers have enjoyed our books... it restores the blood we lose struggling the struggle of words. Readers, you are the lifeblood! Thank you!

If you love their book(s), let them know how you feel! IRL, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Email.... even an old-fashioned letter. There is no greater currency than a genuine compliment.   Sure, buying an author's book(s) is a wonderful way to support our shallow pockets, but that's not the reason the majority of us became writers. We want to inspire, entertain, relate... we want to know that readers enjoyed and/or were touched by our stories. Just the other day, a wonderful reader contacted me

I'm big into fitness. It's an escape from reality, kind of like books. It's also a place where my mind can wander and stories can percolate. One of the primary principles in physical fitness training is something known as the training effect, which is pretty much this: you will become good at what you train for...For example, if you want to become a great cyclist, you cycle a lot. You're gonna build up your cardio, your leg strength, etc. However, you will not be a good runner. Employs similar attributes, but it's a different skillset. Personally, I've got some great back and shoulder strength from doing pull-ups, etc. I can do pull-ups galore. I've got great core strength. This is what's required to do a handstand. I can't even come close to doing a handstand. This got me thinking to writing, and that adage about needing to write a 1,000,000 words to become truly skilled. But there's the rub... are you training for become a skilled cyclist, a yoga master, a crossfit junkie... are all words created equal?In training, there's also something known as plateauing. You do the same thing over and over, your muscles adapt. To get the best gains, you've got to confuse them. Throw in some HIIT and lifting to those long bike rides, throw in some yoga to those crossfit routines or vice-versa... Pretty sure this applies to writing (or pretty much any endeavor)... and kind of even relates to my favorite quote: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds' - Emerson. You want to expand your mind, train it to do more, expand your skills, you've got to go outside your comfort zone...Overcome the fear and crunch those words. Your brain will get ripped.

I'm big into fitness. It's an escape from reality, kind of like books. It's also a place where my mind can wander and stories can percolate. One of the primary principles in physical fitness training is something known as the training effect, which is pretty much this: you will become good at what you train for...   For example, if you want to become a great cyclist, you cycle a lot. You're gonna build up your cardio, your leg strength, etc. However, you will not be a good runner. Employs